Thinking

Thinking is nice. I don’t think enough. Between work, media, other responsibilities and simply staying alert in order to not miss opportunities life throws at you, there is little time for thinking. There are opportunities, but they are always cut short by the next thing on the day’s agenda, whether it was planned or a blitz.

That’s why I tend to go to bed so late. I finally find time to think and I’m being ask to shut my brain off? I don’t think so (no pun intended).

Here’s the irony. The lack of sleep and need to get up at a normal rat-race hour can leave me pretty tired. Not refreshed. And that’s not so conducive to good thinking. But it’s not completely detrimental, just not ideal. I think that’s why I justify choosing the lesser of two evils by sleeping less. I take Emergen-C and eat an okay breakfast to try and fill in some gaps for my brain and body’s defenses.

My recent Longs Peak climb was another opportunity to think. I was sometimes annoyed at the chatty nature of my hiking companions, but that’s nothing against them. I set myself up for some good chi harnessing time and it’s annoying when it’s interrupted by talk of something I consider less important than the silence it killed.

Still, I got some good time in. The physically repetitive act of trekking in a beautiful natural setting triggers my mind to wander and think about things that the hustle and bustle sometimes fails to.

When I do get a chance to really think, it always ends up in one place. Jaime is amazing. No thoughts about future plans, dreams, music, career, politics, money, food (yes, I think deeply about food, especially on the tail end of descending Longs), have any problem quickly finding their way back to this girl and how crazy I am about her. And since she pretty much always falls asleep before me, she has to live with the fact that her sleep will always be interrupted by a kiss or six on the face before I finally crash. ‘Cause that’s when I have time to think.